


Old Witchfinders Never Die

by PeniG



Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: F/M, Funeral, Future Fic, Grief, Possession, Smoking, secondary character death, slurs used affectionately
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-15
Updated: 2020-07-15
Packaged: 2021-03-05 01:20:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,609
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25285993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PeniG/pseuds/PeniG
Summary: Even someone who doesn't take any better care of himself than Sgt. Shadwell can last a long, long time with the help of an angel, a demon, and the Hoor of Babylon. But that doesn't mean he's any readier to go when Death comes for him.
Relationships: Sergeant Shadwell/Madame Tracy (Good Omens)
Comments: 21
Kudos: 71





	Old Witchfinders Never Die

**Author's Note:**

> “Old soldiers never die. They just fade away.” I only knew this phrase from General MacArthur’s speech, and my opinion of MacArthur is low, so I was happy to discover, when I looked it up, that he (or his speechwriter) was borrowing from a British army song of the same title. 
> 
> Speaking of songs, I’ve used an illegal percentage of both “Yellow Submarine” and “I Will” without permission, so shhh! I couldn’t help it; they aren’t long songs and there’s enough whippersnappers out there not knowing all the Beatles lyrics these days that I couldn’t see writing around them. “Yellow Submarine” is a Lennon/McCartney collaboration originally released on the album Revolver, and also as the flip side to “Eleanor Rigby” on the single. “I Will” was written by Paul McCartney and is from the White Album (officially The Beatles, but no one calls it that). The current copyrights of both are held by Sony/ATV Music Publishing LLC. Shadwell was a young man in 1967, so of course he’s a Beatles fan, but I can’t see him being an astute listener to the more complex ones. And he’s correct: It is not physically possible to cry and sing “Yellow Submarine” at the same time, though in the right context wobbliness is achievable.

It was a hot day.

All the days were hot, now. The oldest man on the warmed globe, who had spent his last five birthdays shooting down news drones with the old Thundergun, grunted at the world’s most venerable retired Jezebel, who was listening to the _White Album_ and playing _Centaur Kingdom 7_ online (or whatever they called it now) with the neighbor’s children. She looked up to smile at him, understanding that the grunt meant he was going outside to smoke and give her flowers their midday drink, and would be ready for tea when he came back in. The tea would be on the table when he set foot inside, he knew, stewed to perfection with condensed milk, nine sugars, and a pile of those crisp little ginger biscuits. The dentist said it was miraculous he still had so many of his own teeth. The dentist didn’t know the half of it.

He lit his roll-up and uncoiled the hose, twisting the knob to release the rationed waters with hands that were steadier now than they had been forty-five years ago, when they’d picked a lock and banished an angel thinking it must be a devil. That was a wild day for everyone, and nobody held any grudges. He watered the way the flash bastard had taught him to do when the sun was bright like this, aiming low at the roots to avoid spotting the plants with droplets that would act as magnifying lenses and burn holes in tender leaves and petals. His Jezebel had planned the garden to suit her taste, and occasionally pottered around in it, but he and the flash bastard had done most of the heavy work of fulfilling her vision: just enough tobacco to keep him going, roses and dahlias and gardenias, hydrangeas and peonies and pansies, an herb garden that could cure most ills only by walking through it, all working together with his cigarette to render the afternoon as heavy with scent and color as with heat and humidity. Down the street a neighbor’s sound machine played modern noise, but here the music of the hose, the little fountain, and the bees bearing their loads of pollen from one blossom to the next thrummed happily against his ears. He gazed out over the roofs of Tadfield, toward Hogback Wood Nature Preserve, and imagined he could hear the shrill laughter of the current crop of bairns who’d be playing there.

Pain washed through him, as it did sometime. He braced himself and rode it out. As pain went it wasn’t bad; intermittent and not worth complaining about till the southern pansy and the flash bastard came round again. His Jezebel’d only fuss and make him go to the doctor and fat lot of use that’d be, getting poked and prodded and lights shone in his eyes, told he should cut back the sugar and lay off the baccy by a snot-nosed tyke younger than his macintosh!

SERGEANT SHADWELL.

He ignored the chill on his nape and shifted his cig to one corner of his mouth. “That’s me name. Don’t wear it out.”

IT’S TIME FOR YOU TO COME WITH ME.

“Like fun it is. The Hoor of Babylon’s got me tea on. I’ll no be making her wait it on me.”

SHE WILL WAIT FOREVER TO DRINK TEA WITH YOU AGAIN. YOU HAVE OVERSTAYED YOUR TIME, BUT IN THE END, ALL MUST COME TO ME. 

Shadwell did not remember the airbase with any clarity, but he knew that voice. Everyone, ultimately, knows the voice when they hear it, though few hear it twice. He turned, blocked the end of the hose with his thumb, and sprayed the resulting high-pressure stream of water into the non-face beneath the hood. “Bugger off, you tosser!”

The water passed through the white bone and the black hood and the vast void wings, spattering the pansies with dozens of tiny burning glasses. “Now look what you did!” Shadwell roared. “ The trollope won’t like it!”

YOUR WIFE WILL BARELY NOTICE. SHE’LL HAVE OTHER THINGS TO OCCUPY HER MIND.

Shadwell jerked away from the reaching skeletal hands before he remembered that would spatter more water; but the hose lay limp at his feet, the low-pressure trickle wasting itself on the gravel path he’d raked that morning, soaking the trousers of the body crumpled there with its head in the hydrangeas, extinguishing the cigarette that had dropped from the slack mouth as he fell. A new, less pleasant, smell disrupted the olfactory harmony of the garden. Bone fingers closed around the sergeant’s nonexistent wrist. Shadwell shouted: “You get your hands off me, ye filthy bugger,” and headbutted the Angel of Death.

If he’d been able to put his body into it, it would have been a good solid blow, and would’ve broken his opponent’s nose, if a nose had been there. Instead it met no resistance, and Shadwell pitched forward, drawn helplessly after the retreating angel into an arid, cold, scentless place that had never known a breath of air. He swore a blue streak and dug his heels in, but he had no heels. 

Conversations had swirled around him at various times over the years, about wards and powers and energies; things he’d never understood an eighth of, but when the angel and the demon were working on him to banish the pains and the darkness in his eyes and the muffling of his ears, he knew what that felt like, and he knew how to latch on, to anchor himself to the physical, tangible world in the midst of vague incomprehensible intangible metaphysics. He did so, and stopped dead.

Death regarded him with empty eye sockets. YOUR JOURNEY IS NOT COMPLETED.

“Fine by me,” said Shadwell. “Where'd'ye think ye're taking me?”

IT IS NOT FOR ME TO DETERMINE YOUR DESTINATION. YOU HEART WILL BE WEIGHED AND YOU WILL PROCEED.

“Aye, to Heaven or Hell; but see, I’ve met those that live in both places and they’re all a bunch of wankers.”

THE ANGEL YOU REMEMBER IS NO LONGER IN CHARGE. AND I UNDERSTAND THAT BEELZEBUB’S RECENT RENOVATION PROJECTS HAVE RENDERED HELL MARGINALLY LESS DISAGREEABLE THAN FORMERLY. The not-voice reverberating through Shadwell’s perception of reality sounded amused.

“I don’t care.” The memory of his arms folded over the memory of his chest. “Away from me with yer sales pitches and yer either ors! I don’t have to go anywhere, laddie, don’t try to have me on! My missus used to talk to ghosties and ye cain’t tell me any of that lot came from Heaven nor from Hell."

LIMBO IS NOT A TENABLE RESIDENCE FOR ETERNITY.

“Who said anything about eternity? I’m not going naewhere till the Hoor of Babylon comes with me and I know it’s not her time yet, not by a long chalk!”

He braced himself for the next argument, but Death only regarded his face with the pale steadiness of a skull before shrugging the great wings, at which Shadwell stubbornly refused to look. SUIT YOURSELF. IF YOU TAKE THAT ATTITUDE I CANNOT GUIDE YOU.

“I never asked ye to, so push off!”

VERY WELL. GOOD-BYE, SERGEANT SHADWELL. 

Shadwell was alone in the dark.

Except that it wasn’t exactly darkness and he wasn’t exactly there.

This was all confusing, but Shadwell had spent more time confused than most people spent breathing and had long ago ceased to worry about it. So he had no idea what was going on - so what? Who did? People told themselves stories about gods and devils and angels and witches, atoms and gravity and entropy, dinosaurs and economics and free will, and who knew what all; and persuaded themselves that the particular story that made them comfortable was The Truth, but as far as Shadwell had ever been able to tell, all of their Truths were true at the same time that none of them were and yet, somehow, the world kept ticking along. In a universe where the oldest, most powerful beings he had ever met were a soft touch of a gullible bookseller and a strutting practical joker who never looked at a bill before he paid it, how could an old lag like him hope to keep up? Yet he managed, didn’t he? All he needed to do was mind his own business.

His business was getting back to his Jezebel, and he knew how that was done. The southern pansy had told them all about it over dinner once, an exciting story to tell the bairns during a break from learning how to ward Tadfield against Heaven and Hell.

_It was disorienting even for me after so many years interacting primarily with the physical world, and I have no idea how to describe it to you. Without a guide, I would have been lost; but fortunately I did have a guide, in the form of my emotional connection to Crowley. That took me directly to him at the point he needed me to find him, and though I couldn’t see him or where he was, I was able to communicate with him._

All well and fine; but the pansy’d also found the Jezebel sitting at her seance table, pretending to reach the dead her customers thought they wanted to talk to. He’d been able to see the living and the dead souls, someway, and _Madame Tracy blazed like a hearth fire, surrounded by shades trying desperately to warm themselves_. Shadwell didn’t see any souls, not to recognize them, and he wouldn’t know an emotional connection if it bit him on the nose, but it stood to reason that if strangers could find her, so could her husband. So he reached outward, which was also inward, and oh - _aye, there she was_ -

Years he’d spent, fighting that soft steady pull, trying to do his duty as a witchfinder and a man and resist being sucked into that joyful vortex; and then the world hadn’t ended and he’d surrendered, let the cobbled-together worldview he’d been shoring up all his life shatter and reform around a moral center so sound it corrected the errors of an angel fresh from Heaven. All he had to do now was surrender again.

Witchfinder Captain Ffolks had told him once: _Witchfinders don’t surrender._

The more fools, they!

\---

The Jezebel - or Madam Tracy - or Nanny Shadwell - or Aunt Marjorie - whatever people wanted to call her was fine by her, but she thought of herself as Tracy as often as not - sat on the front fake wood pew in the cold lily smell of the funeral home, and cried because why not? She had no makeup on. Her great-niece Izzy sat on one side, holding her hand, and Aziraphale sat on the other, with his arm so solid and warm around her shoulders she was sure his wing was there, too. 

Her Rob had an excellent turnout. The Them were all here, with those of their families who might be expected to care, though some would have had to come from quite some way. Newt and Anathema and their Mel, who’d called him Granshad, with xir partner and their infant; the pharmacist and the doctor and neighbors, even Professor Macintosh who came round every week or so asking questions about the Witchfinder Army. Crowley and Dog were outside discouraging the news drones whose services wouldn’t be satisfied with Tadfield Newsfeed’s account of the funeral of the Oldest Man in the World. The city council had not sent a representative, but they had sent an enormous wreath, which would have made him snort, civic government and he having an uneasy relationship at best. Perhaps it was that thought that summoned the familiar smell of his burning roll-up, or perhaps Crowley had done something to the air conditioning.

Newt stood at the lectern, gripping the edges as if to support himself. Tracy batted her false eyelashes at him encouragingly. He cleared his throat. “It’s hard to know what to say about Sergeant Shadwell,” he said. “I mean, you all knew him, so there’s no point beating around the bush about it. He was, was an acquired taste as best. Like cigarettes and condensed milk in tea. But he was fascinating, too. I was already in my twenties and been fired six times when I met him, talking about witches in Hyde Park; yet by the end of the week he was like my father, and my grandfather, and my embarrassing uncle, all rolled into one.”

Tracy smiled at that, her mouth wobbling. 

“He was the last member of the Witchfinder Army, which went underground as a secret and, let’s be honest, criminal organization in the days of Charles the Second. I believe Professor Macintosh has a book in the works if you want all the details. Almost the first thing he did when I met him was stick me with the bill for his lunch - he never had two coins to rub together and it had long ago ceased to embarrass him. But I had nothing else going on and I had never known anyone like him before; someone who believed so steadfastly in something so completely out of step with the rest of the world that it seemed I must be missing something. So I let him recruit me, and in a lot of ways that was where my life began. But it wasn’t - I wasn’t - he -“ He swallowed. “On the one hand, he never changed. And on the other hand, he lived in London till he was an old sour husk of a man, hunting for signs of witches in newspapers from all over Britain, living from hand to mouth; and then he upended everything he’d based himself on, gave up on the Witchfinder Army as a going concern, married Madame Tracy, and moved out here to Tadfield to offend his new neighbors and teach children how to shoot the Thundergun of Witchfinder Colonel Dalrymple. He changed his whole life down to the foundations without altering a jot of who he was, or apologizing for anything, or adjusting anything to accommodate what anybody else thought of him. I mean - we’re talking about a man whose nearest approach to greenery for sixty years was on top of a soapbox in Hyde Park, but when buying and selling tobacco were outlawed he swore a blue streak and learned to cultivate and cure his own. He was a terrible old man who never hesitated to boss me around and was too, too stubborn to die, and - it seems impossible - ” Newt’s voice wobbled. He stopped, turned his head, shook it, and drew his shoulders straight again. “Did - no, of course not. I almost thought I heard him, just then. _Buck up, laddie_.” 

He did a good imitation, and no wonder, after all these years. Tracy gave him a thumb up.

“I’m not sure what else to say,” he continued, “only, that I’m going to miss him, so much, but good for him, the old rascal, lasting so, so long.” He got down from the lectern, looked into the coffin, drew a roll-up out of the pocket of his black suit, and inserted it between the inert nicotine-stained lips. “Good-bye, then, Sergeant.”

Then it was time for the final song. She’d had to fight the funeral director for this, and been prepared to sic Crowley and Aziraphale on her if she had to. In the end Newt and Anathema had been enough, and she was glad she’d stuck to her guns when, in the wake of the first astonishment that rippled through the room, Aziraphale wiggled beside her and joined her in leading the singing. Soon the whole room was half-chanting: _We all live in a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine, a yellow submarine!_

Crowley left the drones to Dog and came in to take his place with the other pallbearers - he and Aziraphale in back, Newt and Adam in front, Brian and Wensleydale in the middle, though the biodegradeable coffin and the body within were so light, Aziraphale could have carried it cradled in his arms - and bear the sergeant to the composting site behind the building. Tracy, walking arm-in-arm between Izzy and Anathema, braced herself for the relentless light of a modern summer, but Crowley had not only been busy with drones, it appeared, for clouds had gathered during the service and, as the bearers set their fragile load onto the lowering device, a fine sweet drizzle began. The director read out the familiar lines about ashes to ashes and dust to dust. Pepper, gorgeous and solemn in her Ocean Guardian uniform, fired the Thundergun’s load of rock salt. Madam Tracy dropped Rob’s favorite yellowish-white roses on top of the coffin.

And there they were. That was a funeral.

She stood by the door in case anyone wanted to speak to her again, Aziraphale and Crowley hovering in the background. She kissed Mel’s baby and accepted hugs. “ _Yellow Submarine_?” Professor Macintosh said, suppressing a tearful smile. “I was expecting more of those Witchfinder hymns.”

“We’d already sung all the ones fit for human consumption,” said Tracy. “And Rob particularly wanted it. We’ve been to a dozen funerals here since the place opened, and every time Rob said the closing song was rubbish and he wanted the last song at his to send people out smiling. He said nobody can cry and sing ‘Yellow Submarine’ at the same time. And he was right, wasn’t he?”

“He was,” admitted Professor Macintosh. “Please, call me if you need anything. And, I don’t wish to inconvenience you, but we’d only gotten halfway through the regiment’s records. Let me know when it’s all right to come back. I’ll do my best not to create a disturbance.”

“We will,” promised Tracy, anticipating how moved and delighted he’d be when he learned that he was to be allowed to take the entire roomful of Army paraphernalia in trust - even the hat of Witchfinder General Pulsifer, to which Newt refused all claim.

“I hate to run off back to London,” said Izzy. “Only -“

“Oh, hush, dear, you’ve done plenty for me and you have a life.” Tracy kissed her. “I’m keeping Mr. Fell and Crowley, aren’t I? Come to dinner Sunday as usual and you’ll see I’m well looked after.”

The crowd dispersed, to their nearby homes and to the shuttles that would bear them to their distant homes. Aziraphale handed her into the front seat of Crowley’s big black illegal car, he and Newt and Anathema somehow not crowded at all in the back. Crowley drove, not more than fifty miles per hour in a thirty KPH zone, and they beat the Them, in Wensleydale’s meticulously legal solar, home handily. There the home help the council sent out twice a week ever since the Shadwell longevity became widely known had set out a spread of cold offerings from all over Tadfield and set the tea brewing in the biggest pot. “I can stay and pour and tidy up, if you like,” she offered.

Crowley took her hand, tapped the implant in her wrist with his paypen, and said: “Nope, we can look after ourselves from here out. Off you go.”

“But thank you so much, dear,” chimed in Aziraphale; and off she went. 

“You know she’s paid by the council, right?” Wensleydale asked.

“It’s never a bad idea to tip for personal service.” Crowley slithered over to the refrigerator and pulled out the full econosize Guinness bottle. “All right, you lot, here we all are, funeral’s over, it’s time for the wake.”

Yes, here they all were - Adam, nearly as dark as Pepper from long hours working in the Preserves, with Dog at heel, and wouldn’t the ones who sent the drones sniffing after the world’s oldest humans love to get a line on Dog, if anyone would let them? Pepper, the smartness of her uniform contrasting with the sea-weathering of her face; Brian, rounded and sleek from all the taste-testing and pleasantly wrinkled from all the grinning he did on food distribution rounds; Wensleydale exactly as he always had been save for the gray hair and the weightless vision aids that, from the outside, appeared to flicker slightly whenever his relationship to light shifted. Newt, grown into himself at last, hands calloused and curls thinning; Anathema, the unsung Grande Dame and Warden of Britain and California, smelling perpetually of incense and ozone. Crowley, his hair shorter than Tracy’d ever seen it before, in a cool flared skirt with a dark red tie and a shimmering banded sunshield which he turned off now they were private; Aziraphale, in a sober black suit dating from the eighties, when he’d had so many AIDS funerals to attend.

So many funerals, those two! The idea of the weight of them buckled her knees, and she sat down. “How do you do it?” She asked, trying and failing to keep the quaver out of her voice.

“You drink, you eat, you tell Shadwell stories, nothing to it,” Crowley assured her.

“No, I mean -“ She gestured helplessly, at all of them. “How do you keep - caring so much? How do you _bear_ to? So many people - and we _all_ die - and you two, carrying on -just - accumulating more of us.“

Crowley poured Guinness. “Mmm, yeah, you may have gotten an exaggerated idea of how much I go around caring.”

“No one believes you when you say crap like that,” said Adam, taking a deviled egg for himself from one tray and a liverwurst cracker for Dog from another.

Aziraphale closed Tracy’s hands around a nice hot cup of tea with two sugars, clear and brown and fragrant. “Oh, my dear, how could we bear to stop? The only remedy for grief is _life_ , and the only way to mend the hole in the world left by the absence of one person, is to add more people.”

They were all assembling their plates and taking their accustomed seats around her table, with the ease of forty-five years acquaintance, friendship, shared work and sorrows and joys and triumphs. “My grandma used to say that as long as people remember you, you’re not really dead,” said Brian, setting a brimming plate in front of Tracy, but addressing Aziraphale. “Do you remember all of them?”

“Of course we do.” Aziraphale dropped nine sugar cubes into Rob’s special mug. Pepper handed him the condensed milk can. “Not all the time, of course. Our memories don’t rely on neural connections and other physical resources as yours do, so we have functionally infinite space, but our degree of recall depends on circumstances and how much we, well, _want_ to remember at any given point. We can even exteriorize memory, to a certain extent, if we wish to relive something. I don’t think this wake is the appropriate place for a demonstration, but we’ll be happy to show you at another time. Shall we burn him a roll-up, do you think?”

The shaking of heads around the table was nearly universal, but his earnest blue gaze did not shift from Tracy’s own face. “I don’t think so,” she said. “He wouldn’t want to set off Wensleydale’s asthma.”

“That’s almost cured, actually,” said Wensleydale. “But thank you for thinking about it.”

“I would prevent it triggering, come to that,” said Aziraphale. “But I expect the lingering atmosphere in here is enough.”

Crowley added a mug of Guinness and a plate of biscuits, cakes, and a bacon cricketcake sandwich to Shadwell’s place at table, before he sprawled against Aziraphale, flourishing his mug. “Right, so. First things first. To Shadwell, and may the old lag give ‘em what for, where ever he winds up!”

They all drank. Aziraphale, who’d known Rob longest, talked about how he hadn’t even realized when the Witchfinder Army was reduced to a single man, because Sergeant Shadwell turned in enough paperwork - both payroll and equipment requisitions and news clippings and reports - for a much larger force. “He must have been overwielding the scissors by a good bit. Several times I had to treat carpal tunnel when I paid him.”

Crowley told how Shadwell’d shown up in a dead man’s place to take part in some illegal project - “Which never came off, as it happened; got what I needed without it -“ and induced Crowley to swallow a yarn (“What can I say? I’ve got no gag reflex and can swallow a lot.” Tracy giggled and slapped him playfully.) about a vast secret army ready and willing to be put on retainer for all sorts of shenanigans. Some of these shenanigans he detailed, most of them new to most of the audience. This paved the way for Tracy’s memories of the confused mix of condemnation, protection, and guilty gratitude that had marked his days as her neighbor. After that the floodgates opened, with Newt and the Them trying to top each other in their accounts of his behavior over the past forty-five years, the time he shot the Archangel Gabriel with the Thundergun, his feuds with neighbors and authority, his fierce arguments with Pepper; until finally Anathema (they were on the second pot of tea, had polished off the Guinness, and broached the elderflower wine and the gin) started sobbing into Newt’s shoulder, wailing: “He was a terrible, gross, rude, dishonest, stupid, emotionally constipated old grump with nipple issues! _Why do I miss him?_ ”

“It’s true,” sniffed Brian, rubbing his nose with the back of his hand. “The man did not have a single virtue. But I loved him more than my own grandad, who was a pillar of the community before he became the ideal care home patient.”

“Oh, Brian, Brian, how have you lived so long and not realized that we don’t love people for their _virtues_?” Crowley sneered . “Where would _any_ of us be, if it worked like that?”

Everyone was sobbing now. Tracy could almost hear Rob growl: _Lay off the waterworks, you lot! Have ye nae self-respect?_ So she took the hand with which Anathem was not clinging to Newt’s neck and began, high and breathy: “In the toooown where I was boooorn, there lived a maa-ah-an, who sailed the seeea -“

“And he toold us of his life,” Aziraphale joined in - not bothering to be off-key for once, a sound almost too pure and sweet to bear - “In the laa-ah-and of submarines.”

Crowley waved his mug as he and Newt added their voices. “So we saiaiailed up to the sun until we fou-ow-ownd a sea of green. Now we liiiiiive beneath the waaaaaaves -”

“IN OUR YE-HELL-OW SUBMARINE!” The Them, having arrived at the lyrics they knew, screamed them in chorus as if they were eleven years old again. Dog woke from the nap he’d been taking on the sofa to leap around barking and wagging his tail. 

Anathema let go of Newt, banged her teacup on the table, and joined the chant: “We all live in a yellow submarine! A yellow submarine! A yellow submarine!”

 _Oh, how I love them all,_ thought Tracy, her heart swelling as those who knew the lyrics sang through the second part and Crowley and Aziraphale provided submarine and brass band noises. _And how Rob did, too. He never once said so, but he did. You can tell, by the way they all love him._

The drizzly afternoon faded to a rainy dusk, which would fill all the catchment cisterns in the area nicely by morning if it kept up. Pepper, with her duty to her whales and her ship, was the first to mention leaving. The Them departed, as they always departed, from whatever disparate parts of the world they might arrive, in a chattering, harmonious group. Newt and Anathema stayed awhile longer, the hilarity of the peak of the wake mellowing into a verbal mosaic of the time the world did not end, and how their lives all pivoted on those fuzzy memories. Once that wound down, witch and witchfinder took the opportunity to review the property’s wards, they being late on this annual bit of maintenance due to circumstances, before walking down the hill to where Mel and the baby no doubt waited for them. Crowley and Aziraphale put away the food and drink and did the washing up with fingersnaps.

“Do you want us to stay?” Aziraphale asked. “Or are you ready to be alone here?”

“I’m ready,” Tracy assured him. “But I don’t think I’ll be alone. Surely you know that?”

“It’s...not really our province. If Azrael isn’t actually present to bridge the realms we’re as blind as humans. Blinder.”

“In that case. Yes. I’ll be all right.” She kissed them both and saw them off into the night, before turning off the outdoor light and betaking herself to the walk-in bathtub, where she indulged in bubbles and the last glass of elderflower wine. Then she donned her best dressing gown, collected her makeup mirror, and sat down in her recliner in the lounge, head bowed, hand on the arm of Rob’s recliner, on the worn place where his elbow had rubbed the upholstery.

Her old hi-fi (which miraculously started working properly again when they’d first moved here, after Crowley had packed it even though she told him it was only fit to toss out and she wasn’t sure what to do with all her vinyl) clicked and the LP she had forgotten about listening to when Rob died began turning. She watched the arm set itself down in the middle of a short track.

_Love you forever and forever._

“Oh!” She blinked as she sang along, barely audible in her own ears to start, but gathering strength until she could obey the song’s injunction on the relevant line.

_Love you with all my heart._   
_Love you whenever we’re together._   
_Love you when we’re apart._

_And when at last I find you_   
_Your song will fill the air._   
_Sing it loud so I can hear you._   
_Make it easy to be near you._   
_For the things you do endear you to me._   
_You know I will._   
_I will._

She opened her arms wide as the needle lifted and the arm returned to its place of rest. “Come here, then, dearie. It’s not as if you’ve never been inside me before!”

It wasn’t like holding him, alive. And it wasn’t like containing Aziraphale. A bit itchy. But when she looked into the makeup mirror, she saw him; not the too tidy, too still shell in the coffin, but him, with three days of whiskers and his mouth settled into his best pleased frown. She wasn’t sure which of them needed to blink her eyes so rapidly. “Hello, harlot,” her own voice growled gently.

“Hello, dearie. Comfortable?”

He shifted her shoulders. “Aye, weel enough. How you holding up?”

“I’m fine now that you’re here. You saw the funeral?”

“Aye, most of it. I was still getting the hang of things, so I missed bits. I’m ashamed of Newt, being so sentimental like, but the boy was aye soft.”

“Did you see the wreath the council sent?”

“I did, the bluidy hypocrites! I don’t want a wreath, I want them to fix the damn retaining wall like they promised!”

Tracy laughed, and was surprised to feel for herself the way Rob’s heart bounded at the sound. “I’ll call them tomorrow. Will you want to talk to them?”

“I should, but they’ll be nae good to ye if they all have heart attacks, will they? Get the flash bastard ontae ‘em, he’ll sort ‘em out.”

“That’s a bit extreme, don’t you think? I was going to ring up that nice lawyer.”

“Weel, if you think it best. But if that don’t work, you have big guns, so use ‘em, lass! Or I’ll give you nae rest and don’t think I can’t do it!”

“I know you can.” She smiled at him in the mirror, he frowned at her, and the push-pull of her features made her laugh again. “Would you like a smoke, dear?”

“Nae, thanks. The Nutter woman showed me how to use the memory of smoke here and that’ll do me for noo. But don’t let anybody dig up that baccy, I may want it later.” He hesitated, pursing her lips. “Might I have a cup of tea, though? That damn skeleton blighter kept me from my last one.”

So she sprang up and brewed a fresh pot, pouring a nice clear mug for herself and stewing his to the required consistency before adding the sugars and condensed milk. “What else would you like to do before we go to bed, then?”

“We never finished watching that show, the one with the wee bit of a girl and the ugly fella.”

“ _Jane Eyre_? I thought you were only watching that for me.”

“Eh, I dint mind it.” 

But she could feel, now, the shy itch of interest, and the embarrassment of admitting to it. “Well, it’s all recorded, so if we’re not too tired we can finish it tonight.”

“We’ll see how we do then.” He raised his mug to her lips and drank the thick, hot, stunningly sweet brew; then he set it down and she took up her own mug to sip the slightly astringent comfort in it. 

Tracy put the mugs down in front of the makeup mirror on the little table between the recliners, and hesitated. “Shall we sit in your spot, or mine?”

“Mine would be nice,” he admitted; so she settled in, letting him arrange her limbs into his accustomed positions, with his feet up and his elbow on the worn space. “It’s good to be home.”

“It’s good to have you here,” said Tracy.

-30-


End file.
